—para doña Elva
… if you can hear these words …

I.
Barefoot a woman walks
south down the black highway
a blue shirt tied at her waist
hiding her bare hips

She crosses her arms
across her bare
large, sagging breasts
her eyes looking down

just walking, walking

Her sun-toasted skin
the color of the eastern hills
twisted from the earth’s depths,
sparsely covered with thorny brush

Above those heights circle frigate birds
flying inland from the deep-blue sea
on the other side of the highway,
ebbing, flowing upon sand

the color of her sun-toasted skin

II.
Quarter moon passes to new

& this afternoon
I see that woman
bewitched by her
husband’s lover

walking northward
up that black highway
bare-breasted, bare-bottomed
barefoot, sun-toasted

walking, just walking …

—

Lorraine Caputo is a documentary poet, translator and travel writer. Her works appear in over 100 journals on five continents, such as Drumvoices Revue, ENcontrARTE (Venezuela), übergang (Germany), Open Road Review (India), Cordite Poetry Review (Australia) and Bakwa (Cameroon); nine chapbooks of poetry – including her recent collection, Caribbean Nights (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), five audio recordings and twelve anthologies. She also pens travel pieces, with stories appearing in the anthologies Drive: Women’s True Stories from the Open Road (Seal Press, 2002) and Far Flung and Foreign (Lowestoft Chronicle Press, 2012), and travel guidebooks. In March 2011, the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada chose her verse as poem of the month. She has done over 200 literary readings, from Alaska to the Patagonia. For the past decade, Ms Caputo has been journeying through Latin America, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth. You may follow her travels at Latin America Wanderer: www.facebook.com/lorrainecaputo.wanderer.